COMMON STRATEGIC COMPETENCE EMPLOYED BY SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL DEBATERS

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1Background of the Study

English
debate is nowadays widely known among senior high school students especially in
Semarang. This activity has been something popular for its image among both
students and English teachers. They think of this activity as something
outstanding. This thought may appear due to the fact that not many students of
senior high school are able to do so. Only those who are at least capable in
producing oral communication in English will be chosen as debater.

Referring
to this assumption, it is no wonder that the number of English debaters is not
of great significance compared with the whole number of students in general.The effort of facilitating this great
potential has been done. It is proven that many competitions among high schools
and vocational schools havebeen conducted recently. In fact, this effort gains
so much attention and respect from several parties. They are students as the
agent, teachers as the supporters, and frequently may collaborate with the
government as the facilitator through Department of Education to present debate
competitions. The question that may arise upon this notion is how it gains such
great attention.

On
the one hand, if we see this fact from the perspective of students’ cognitive
aspect, we come into the answer that debate itself will stimulate the students to have good understanding of what
happens around them. It deals with how they cope with the current issues and
how they position themselves as humans who have great faith in their own
thought or idea upon the issues. This thought is not merely for the sake of
their own, it is to be believed by others. In short, we can say that debate can
be used as a tool to prepare students to cope with social life.

On
the other hand, if we see this fact from the perspective of linguistic knowledge,
debate can be used as a tool to train students to use the language practically.
In relation to English language learning, it is actually the implementation of
language in use; that is oral communication.Those two elements mentioned above, as the answer of the question
arises, carry a comprehensive concept. This concept constitutes the reason why
debate necessarily affects one’s mindset and the need of debaters to convince
the adjudicators that somehow their case is logical, reliable, convincing, and
therefore undefeatable. To reach this point, a debater should have the
competence that will ease them in carrying his massage through speech so that
it becomes comprehensible and convincing to the adjudicators as the decision
makers of the winning. Since it deals with the massage being conveyed and the
language being employed, one way to overcome this is to have what so called
communicative competence. As stated by Hymes (1972), communicative competence
is the knowledge which enables someone to use a language effectively for??????????????????????/